Posted tagged ‘The Film Talk’

Great new stuff from our friends at The Film Talk, an interview with Elliott Gould who will be appearing at the Film Society tomorrow and Sunday, as a part of our Natalie Wood tribute and screening of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Note to film buffs: the film premiered at the 1969 New York Film Festival, and two of the original actors who were there will be here at the Film Society this week! Check out the podcast for Mr. Gould’s fantastic memories of working with Natalie Wood, as well as other recollections of his impressive careers in the movies.

From our friends at The Film Talk, a podcast about Ang Lee, who’s the subject of a retrospective at the Film Society, now through August 11. Check it out to learn why it’s important to appreciate directors while they are mid-career, how it’s possible to bridge the art house and the multiplex, and the one genre the wide-ranging Lee hasn’t tackled yet.

Coming to you from Belfast and Nashville via the Internet, the opinionated gents of The Film Talk (Gareth Higgins and Jett Loe) dissect our Satyajit Ray series. You can listen to them talking about achieving effortless naturalism in cinema, the proper pronunciation of Satyajit Ray’s name, and the meaning of a Ray retrospective in the midst of a world of multiplexes. It’s a great contextualization of our Ray series, which is closing tomorrow (Wednesday).

New podcasts from The Film Talk come out frequently, and cover notable movies both high and low. You can subscribe to them on iTunes, or visit their official site.

Straight out of Nashville, The Film Talk‘s Jett Loe files this reaction to the films of Satyajit Ray.

There was a strange mental disconnect involving the escalators at the Regal Cinemas Green Hills during the Nashville Film Festival last week.

The Festival screenings all took place on the lower level of the building. If you had to go up a level, say to get to your parked car, you ascended the escalator – and in doing so you left behind intrusive, investigative cinema that tried to apprehend the world and entered…what?

This contrast between cinema that actually tries to do something, (convey the human experience perhaps?), and cinema that exists seemingly only as a joyless works program, is so great that I don’t think these different types of films are actually the same medium.

Pics like ‘Fast and Furious’ or ‘State of Play’ aren’t films in the way we are used to thinking of them – they’re animated Power Point Profit Projections – they’re advertisements for themselves.

But I stayed away from Ray. I don’t know why, (my earliest memories are of being in India so that may have something to do with it – but I’ll save theories on Ray avoidance for another post!); the point is I never saw a Satyajit pic until until an hour ago.

Now, astoundingly, my podcast co-host and fellow cinephile Gareth Higgins has never seen a Ray picture either, (!), so we are compelled to record a show dedicated to Pather – online tomorrow, April 28. In the meantime I’ll make some observations, not about the themes of the film, which we’ll discuss on the podcast, but on technique.

In Yojimbo director Akira Kurosawa used a simple trick that I wish modern film makers would make more use of. He established a world that existed independent of the protagonist – so we see Yojimbo walking into a new town then cut to the inside of a bar: we see the bar owners for a minute – a couple squabbling, and then Yojimbo enters. They, and by extension the world, existed independent of the hero. This is contrary to most modern commercial films that posit a universe that revolves around the main characters.

Ray used this technique in Pather – taking it to an extreme by opening the story before Pather’s hero, Apu, is even born.

So in Pather we feel we’re seeing something real – a real, lived in world; artificiality, the artificiality of Hollywood cinema, has been stripped away.

Ray carries off another trick – in Pather compelling performances make you empathise with the people on screen – so traditional narrative structure is not required. What Ray does do is show you events. This also creates a sense of the real world – we move beyond structure and are immersed in the real – the power of the story is increased immensely as a result.

I could go on for thousands of words here – but will save it for tomorrow’s podcast – I hope it will make you go out and see as many Ray pics as you can.

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The latest on what's happening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, dispatches from the New York Film Festival and exclusive content from Film Comment magazine.
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